Web Pages

Hey, a lot of departments are putting up web pages to reach out to the community. Has it helped recrutment or awareness? Also for those of us that don't have a web page how should we go about getting one and what information do you think is essential to put on the fire department web page?

To be truthful, the best way to design a web page is to plagerize others. This is a time honored web tradition. As far as info, review a bunch, and add what you like. Many add fire prevention info, contacts, upcoming events, and alike. Some even have section that addresses building owners/caretakers to submit preplans or ask questions. Firehouse has a link section, follow that. As to getting web space, try your municipality or county for free space or try a service that provides space for 'free'. The drawback with these type are; limited styles, limited creativity, tough to add links, and they tack on those STUPID ad banners.
If you promote your site through the schools, fire prevention programs, or customer contact, people will look.
A simple wep page program is MS FrontPage.
Good luck and have fun with it.

I agree about the use of MicroSoft FrontPage (I use it!) but unless your internet service supports FrontPage extensions, many of the features are lost. As an alternative, I suggest trying Microsoft Publisher. While I am not a big MS supporter, this is a great publishing program, which can do a lot more than web sites.

If you are looking for a place to host your site, there are many availabe - but check on the method by which you can upload your pages (those which support open FTP are best.) Then get a copy from the 'net of WSFTP to do the file transfers.

Resist the temptation to post lots of graphics - those still locked in the telephone modem world hate waiting forever for sites to load. If you do use graphics, keep the resolution low (< 100 dpi) and small.

Update you site on a regular basis - no one will come back more than twice if there isn't anything new!

If you need help, try a local community college or high school -you can even sponsor a web-site design contest.

As Chief Ruting mentions, if your ISP doesn't support the Frontpage extensions a lot of features (programmed) can be lost.

We use Microsoft Frontpage simply as an html editing/authoring tool. We do not use the Frontpage extensions. Also, there have been reports that the extensions sometimes cause other problems (so I have heard).

We tried using Microsoft Publisher but with little success in getting "what you see is what you get" (WSIWYG).

Web Site are great for Fire Depts..Im a Firefighter as well as a Web Developer...But I have 1 problem with Microsoft Front Page it tends to be a bit Biased with netscape I would recomend getting Maromedia Dreamweaver....and to design Graphics you can use Photoshop 5.0 which is the BEST Desgin tool if you have no design skill you can go to a great site call http://www.webdevelper.com they have great grphics and HTML tutorials and the best way to design a site is to look at how other sites are layed out on of the best is Hyattsville web site at http://www.hvfd.com its great

I had forgotten i'd posted this and ran a cross it. Thanks for the ideas. Since then I have created my department's web page and you can see how i did by clicking on Schodack Valley in my signiture. Let me know how i did! Thanks

Indeed a web site can be your best friend or your worst enemy. I agree that too much flashy content can cause visitors to lose interest in a site real quick.. moving on after getting tired of waiting for java applets and graphics to load.

The general rule of thumb is to watch the size of your graphics on a page, use low-res thumb nailes (or just text links) where possible, and distribute graphics across pages.

Where possible, have friends connect and test your load times, because what might load quickly on your ISP (since you are on the same ISP), it may be totally different otherwise.

I'm happy to see that there are many departments out there who not only have great sites, but extend help to others who want to create something new.

Some of the tools that have worked well for me are Adobe Photoshop (the lite version is great for lite budgets). FrontPage 2000 is a world of difference from FP98.. I don't know how I managed to keep my sanity in the days I did straight html coding.

Probably the best tool you can use is feedback from your friends - having tunnel vision when developing a site is pretty easy.. been there, done that! And finally, solicit feedback from your visitors.. that's a great tool also for a successful site.

Another caveat that you need to be aware of when writing web pages. Netscape and Internet Explorer handle some HTML extensions differently. So I use both browsers when I am writing or updating my pages to check content. Another thing to think about, if you are planning to use style sheet extensions in your pages, older browsers do not recognize the style tags, so your carefully crafted pages may not turn out the way you plan. I have used them on some of our department's pages, mainly because it allows me to cut down on load time, but have been reconsidering because of this issue. Our departments web site is located at www.webpak.net/~cfd if you care to look for ideas.